After three episodes of filler, the last of which was a terrible, worthless piece of fecal spray, the bipolar creative team swings in the opposite direction, diving back into the main story with a gentle, finely made chapter letting us settle back into our characters as events start to reshape around them.

Things aren't going well for Samekichi Shirogane. After losing his casino train in episode #8, he finds that the police have caught wind and are now fully siding with the old-blood Tanokura family, hassling and arresting members of Shirogane's Ginzame cartel for minor discretions, many of which are made up. As his ties and stakes are drifting away, he starts reaching out feelers to see who's still willing to stand by him.

Elsewhere, Miyuki has the day off school and decides to take George out on a date. His regular diner has run out of noodles (great bit with the nasty frozen fish) so he's quick to accept her offer of food, despite the restaurant being located in the territory of her father's enemies. It's a nice sequence and I'm still surprised at how well Miyuki's infatuation plays out, given that such things typically annoy me in shows like this. And props for giving us a moment where she breaks down and reveals all the thoughts and worries hidden behind her bright smile.

I'd really love to know what was going on behind the scenes of this series. It very occasionally shines with touching episodes like this, but often falls into meaningless, empty gloss, and why is it that when the writing takes a huge step up, so does the animation. Everything was smooth and consistent this time, with little bits of business building off the sharp, quietly revealing dialogue. Whereas most of the episodes stumble over their limitations and lack of substance, here the creators managed to triumph over them and make it work quite beautifully.

It's truly strange how inconsistent this series is, but if they can somehow latch onto the strengths they display here and manage not to sink to their previous lows, they could really have something that would make those earlier episodic messes worth while. We'll just have to see.

While roaming the town one evening with a boisterous Raccoon, George comes across the body of a dead man lying outside a church. In the time it takes for him to fetch Raccoon and put in a call to the police, the body is strung up from the bell tower, setting in motion a rather sucky mystery.

The first tick against it is that moving of the body. George took his eyes off it for all of 5-6 seconds, and in that time we're supposed to believe someone roped up the ankles and hauled it about 4-5 stories? I'm sorry, but no. And then there's ridiculous things like a blindness tied to a guilty conscience that conveniently fades once the statute of limitations for a past crime passes, or the visual style that's become such a consistent element of pain, with gimmicky uses of closeups, silhouettes, and superimposition failing to cover the minuscule animation budget.

But the biggest problem is that there wasn't any murder! Well, yes, there was a body fished out of the lake in the beginning, but that's the end of an earlier thread. No, this guy strung from the bell tower died purely because he caught his foot on a crack in the stone. And that's not even a big revelation, it's something we see right up front! So we're supposed to believe that these people were so desperate to cover up a crime which didn't happen that they'd reposition the body in a way that guarantees it'll trigger an investigation? Fuck you, creative team, for thinking we're all such morons.

This was a bad, worthless wreck of an episode. And why was it even here? What does it have to do with the broader story? Not a damn thing.

Every month, the Ginzame cartel invites the local yakuza to enjoy an all-night gambling spree on a rail-bound casino free from the threat of police raids. The previous owners of the train, the Hatsushiba, are eager to get it back so they bring their top card-shark, Kuroki, to break the bank. Fearing this possibility, Ginzame head Samekichi Shirogane enlists the talents of George.

While they managed to eek some suspense out of the tired story in their typically clunky fashion, this episode was yet another in a long chain of misfires for the series. George being there is a complete coincidence as Shirogane doesn't even realize the man's gambling skills until it's too late, so why was he invited on the train in the first place? He's been jumping from side to side, quitting jobs on a whim, so revealing a chunk of the cartel's underground operations to him makes no sense.

And the entire episode means nothing. What does this struggle with a new cast of goons have to do with the broader investigation into the town? Likely, nothing. Just as it has absolutely nothing to do with the broader theme that's been largely absent, namely George pitting the sides against one another. Here, when you've got all the thugs in cramped, tight quarters, would have been a perfect opportunity to start triggering major conflicts between them. But, no, yet another opportunity is lost by a creative team that obviously has no idea where it was they were supposed to be going.

After George quietly slips back into the main town of Kimujuku (he's literally just there in the noodle shop the next morning) a Professor from Tokyo, Uekusa, arrives in town. He's apparently become an annual regular at Sanae's inn, as he's become fascinated with the town's mythical history as a place where demons once dwelt. Demon, in fact, is the meaning of the frequently found family name of Araki, and the Professor believes the demons were once western settlers who may have left behind a hidden treasure.

Which brings us to the big, muscular slab of thug posing as the Professor's assistant.

As I'm sure you can guess, this all becomes a rubbish treasure hunt with gangsters trying to get their hands on the loot. It's pretty predictable and by-the-numbers, and even the revelation of what the treasure actually is feels quite underwhelming. I get what they're trying to do, using the legends of demons as a big metaphor for the town itself (despite it being largely un-hellish and non-demonic, which it should be, dammit) but even that falls apart once they all go scrambling for an entrance way the Professor already knew about, but he needed one other person to help move the stone which blocked it. Yes, yet another one of those WTF? moments where we are expected to believe that the Professor, during all his years of coming to this town, never once brought a second pair of hands to help move that final rock.

This episode is fail all around. Not only poorly conceived and executed, but it unnecessarily shoves aside the broader plot for a chapter. What about all that info George dug up on Sanae and the Araki family? He never once confronts Sanae, nor even mentions his findings. And even the surprised reactions of Miyuki and Raccoon at George's return were surprisingly muted and brief. And speaking of Raccoon, just whose side is he on?

To the creative team of this show, I'm sorry. It just isn't working. Hasn't from the beginning.